Welcome Principal Pam
Dear Families & Community Members of PS 347,
As of December 30th, 2022, I was formally appointed Principal of PS 347. It has been an honor to work with families and students as interim acting principal and I am looking forward to all our future successes. I wanted to formally introduce myself to the community by providing some additional background information.
I am hearing; however, grew up in a mainstream setting. I attended K-12 school in New Hampshire which at the time had a Deaf and Hard of Hearing program. Having the opportunity to socialize with so many Deaf students and adults, I became fluent in ASL at a young age.
After college, I started my career as an ASL interpreter. As many young people do, I also moved to Southern California. Within a few years, I moved onto an ASL interpreter/paraprofessional role and found that I loved working with students and also wanted to return to the east coast. I applied to and was accepted into the NYC Teaching Fellows, receiving my masters degree in special education from Pace University. In my teaching career, I taught special education students with a variety of disabilities, most notably, CODAs from PS 347.
Aside from special education, I have a deep love for the arts and am dually certified as a visual arts teacher. I have found many opportunities to merge my skillsets both in the classroom and out, often merging the field of special education and the arts. When I left teaching, I worked in the NYC DOE’s Office of Arts and Special Projects, where I led the Students with Disabilities Online Resource Compendium work. I later consulted on the Teach with GIVE guide. After getting my administrative degree, I became the Director of Instruction and Curriculum at the NY School for the Deaf, where I worked closely with a Deaf principal to improve instruction. I also coordinated and led the school wide Festival of the Arts celebration. This work led to my receipt of the VSA NYC Marquis Studio award for Arts advocacy. I presented for 3 consecutive years at the Kennedy Center VSA Intersections conference. In 2019, I was the only hearing administrator to take part in VSA Intersections pre-conference day, Promoting Equity at the Intersection of Deaf Education and the Arts.
In 2019, I moved to Beacon, NY and accepted a private school position, closer to home, supervising special education students. Through what inevitably was a difficult time for all of us, post-covid, I missed public school and the many opportunities to work with district team members and within a larger school community. While my journey has been a bit of an adventure, I have been blessed to find myself in the principal position at PS 347. I could not have invented a better position suited to my skill set and passions. Thank you to the Deaf community for your patience, language and for your limitless support. Thank you, families and community members of PS 347 for trusting me as your leader. I cannot wait to see all the work we do together.
